Astatic CB-1
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Based in the eastern Lake Erie town of Conneaut Ohio, the Astatic Corporation was principally a microphone and phonograph-cartridge maker founded in the late '30s by two Ham Radio operators. No doubt because their town was too far away from TV stations in Cleveland or Buffalo, their engineers came up with a series of TV signal boosters, the last of which was the model CT-1. With the opening of the UHF TV channels in late 1952, they added UHF converters to the lineup.
The CB-1 Converter-Booster includes both the CT-1 VHF booster and a UHF converter in one package. The booster portion used two dual triode tubes -- a 6J6 for low band, and a 6BQ7 for the high band -- in the then-ubiquitous permeability-tuned configuration. The UHF tuner is on a separate chassis, and uses a 6T4 oscillator and crystal diode mixer. A heftier-than-usual power transformer and a selenium rectifier stack provide necessary tube voltages. The styling is in the more modern form of the CT-1 booster, but in a larger painted steel cabinet. Like the CT-1, the CB-1 came in both woodgrain pattern or plain "mahogany" brown cabinets. |
Updated March 12, 2018